


Alone

by Agogobell28



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Gen, Oneshot, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-12
Updated: 2017-09-12
Packaged: 2018-12-26 22:39:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12068394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Agogobell28/pseuds/Agogobell28
Summary: Beth lies awake at night.Pre-canon, pre-Maggie Chen.





	Alone

Beth is alone in the night. She lies on her bed with the window open; a few crickets chirp outside, and the sound of a car passes.

It's one of the very few times that Paul is out, doing something or other; has he gone to Coady's? She doesn't know how she feels about him being out of the house. It doesn't provoke much - then again, Paul hasn't provoked much in her lately either.

Beth is alone in the night - it's one of the increasingly rare times when she hasn't downed several sleeping pills with some anti-anxiety tablets as a garnish. She was buzzing all day, functioning in the altered state she's grown used to, but now she's clear-headed. And it feels altogether strange.

She's cognisant of the air enveloping her, the open window letting in the sounds of the fall night, the way her body sinks into the mattress. But she's not filled with the sensations like she normally is; she doesn't feel them shooting through her brain like lightning between two Tesla coils. It's more muted now, softer, and it takes her a bit of time to realise that it's because she's not taken the bucketload of meds she normally does just before bed.

And god, she is fucking tired. She can feel the immediate tiredness of the long day and the hard work and the residual fatigue from her run this morning. But there's something deeper, cumulative: from what her life has become, from this watching and searching and finding and not-finding. Guessing, fearing, that everyone could potentially be out to get her. How can she even know who to trust?

Beth is alone in the night - for now, anyway. She thinks that this is the only time in the past six months that she's felt human again. Her life has never been totally easy, but she's usually been able to count on seclusion and silence to make her feel whole, unbound, unfettered by the chains of the world. Time doesn't exist, during these short pockets of night before she goes to sleep. But it's all disappeared into the sinkhole that opened up beneath her when she found out about her genetic identicals, and the shit with Katja has forced her to dig herself unwillingly deeper and deeper.

But now, that precious pocket of space has opened up again for her, and she knows that she must occupy it for as long as it chooses to last. It's escape, in a way, without ever actually breaking the bonds - a little loophole. But she can't ever run away, even though she sometimes dearly wishes she could. Her clones need her too badly. It's her duty, she supposes, something that's attached onto her spinal cord and won't let go.

The guilt would consume her, would immolate her very being, if she abandoned ship. But then again, she thinks, the guilt is already consuming her. She can't dig into this whole mystery alone - even with Katja doing something similar, contact with her German clone is sporadic and difficult to coordinate.

There's always Mika, thinks Beth. She's probably farther along than Beth is. But she has so many trust issues and so much paranoia that it almost freaks her out. She occasionally gets flashes in Mika of herself, in the future, years down the line, sequestered into hiding, too scared to do anything for fear of collapsing under the sheer weight.

Mika, she thinks, is truly alone. And as much as Beth would like to say that Mika has her, she's not at all sure that's true.

And now, Beth is alone in the night. She can live as long as she likes in this little pocket of soft, comforting darkness, but her emotional composure is slowly atrophying. Her sense of right and wrong, self and other, rational and irrational are gradually deteriorating. And eventually the dawn will come, and the bright hot light of the sun will bake her, ready for another drugged-up day at work. She wonders what the point even is.

She's too far gone, she thinks, in a moment of clarity. And then she's asleep, having dreams she'll instantly forget.

**Author's Note:**

> Written in a little over an hour at 1 AM, from a snap idea I had.


End file.
